Chalk Pastel Warm/Cool Landscapes

4th Graders learned about warm and cool colors and how to use pastels when they made these landscapes. First we talked about what kinds of things you find in a landscape, such as hills, mountains, trees, and other things you find in nature. Next, I demonstrated how to draw the landscape. We did these on 9"x12" black construction paper and drew everything with regular glue. You don't even have to draw it with a pencil first. Just draw your landscape on the black paper with a regular glue bottle, making thick white lines. The three things that make up the landscape are:

1. Rolling Hills (Bottom)
2. Rounded mountains (Middle)
3. Concentric circles (Top)

The rolling hills are easy, just make wavy lines, starting at the bottom, and put them all the way across your paper. You can make as many as you want. Next is the rounded mountains. These are just curved lines. they should touch the wavy lines. I like to make them rounded because everything else is rounded or curved, and I think it looks better than pointy mountains. Finally the concentric circles will go in either corner. This will be the sun or moon, depending on what time of day you want it to be. I started with a small circle, and then drew about four more around it. Drawing all of this with glue will take one day. After the glue is on the black paper, you have to be really careful not to let it drip or bend your paper on the way to the drying rack. The glue will be completely dry by the time they have their next art class.

On the next two days, students will color their different parts of the landscape with chalk pastels. They will use both warm (red, orange, yellow) and cool (green, blue, purple) colors in an alternating pattern. For instance, if it is nighttime, the moon or circles will have to be colored cool colors. Then the mountains should be colored warm, and the hills should be cool. Nighttime is easy because you can leave the sky black.
The chalk pastels or soft pastels can get messy, so I always demo how to use them first. I keep them in plastic bags at their tables and at the end of class, I have them clean up with baby wipes or wet paper towels and hand sanitizer. After they are all done I spray them with Aqua Net (cheap hairspray works the best!) so that the pastels stick to the paper more easily. I always send home pastels in a manila paper folder or tape a manila paper cover page on top so that it doesn't get as messy.

I usually get great results with this project. Take a look...

One of the reasons I love doing the glue on black paper with pastels is because they turn out so bright!